Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam, and the Future of Europe

By Zachary Shore

A look into the state of Islam in Europe and the threat posed by excluding moderate Muslims in Western society.

While American leaders wage war with extremists in the Middle East, they are ignoring a greater threat closer to home. In Breeding Bin Ladens, Zachary Shore asserts that the growing ambivalence of Europe’s Muslims poses risks to national identities, international security, and the transatlantic alliance.

Europe’s failure to integrate its Muslim millions and America’s battered image in the Muslim world have left too many Western Muslims easy prey for violent dogmas. Until America and Europe adopt new strategies, Shore argues, Europe will increasingly become the incubation ground for breeding new Bin Ladens.

The United States continues to spend billions and lose thousands of soldiers to combat Islamic extremists, a group estimated to be as small as fifty thousand. Meanwhile, Western leaders have not sought to understand the millions of moderate Muslims who live peacefully in the United States and Europe. Many in this extraordinarily diverse group are deeply ambivalent toward perceived Western values. Although they may admire America’s economic or technological might, many are appalled by its crass consumerism, sexualization of women, lack of social justice, and foreign policies.

Through in-depth interviews with Muslims living across the European Union, Shore gives voice to people of deep faith who speak of the conflict between their desire to integrate into their adopted societies and the repulsion they feel toward some of what the West represents.

Shore offers a consideration of Islam’s future in the West. Cautioning Western leaders against an anti-terrorist tunnel vision that could ultimately backfire, Shore proposes bold, creative, and controversial solutions for attracting the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims living in the West.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 15, 2006
• ISBN: 9780801889509

Zachary Shore

Zachary Shore is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and a senior fellow at Berkeley's Institute of European Studies. The author of What Hitler Knew and Breeding Bin Ladens, he lives in Berkeley, California.

Book preview

BREEDING BIN LADENS

Zachary Shore

BREEDING BIN LADENS

America, Islam,

and the Future of Europe

© 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2006

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

The Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shore, Zachary.

Breeding Bin Ladens : America, Islam, and the future of

Europe / Zachary Shore.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8018-8505-1 (alk. paper)

1. Muslims—Europe. 2. Islam—Europe. 3. Europe—Ethnic relations—21st century. I. Title.

D1056.2.M87S56 2006

305.6′97094—dc22         2006007080

A catalog record for this book is available from the

British Library.

To the many European Muslims who graciously shared their experiences, opinions, and time with me

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Prolific Assassin

1 : London Bridges

2 : Islamic Awakenings

3 : Two Faces, Two Futures

4 : Headscarf Headaches, Cartoon Chaos

5 : Migration Migraines

6 : Clash of the Barbies

7 : New Europe, Same Old Issues

8 : The Future of Muslim Europe

Conclusion: Looking Back To Look Ahead

Epilogue: Attracting the Second Circle

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

Everything seemed so hopeful. When Europeans tore down the Berlin Wall, East and West embraced. In the years that followed, Europeans steadily continued knitting a hodgepodge of peoples into an ever closer union. Social cohesion is fundamental to the European dream, but that dream has lately suffered a rude awakening. While Europe’s eyes were fixed on integrating the Union’s new eastern member states, they overlooked a restive group growing within the West. As in November 2005, Paris burned through two weeks of violence, Americans looked on with grim unease, and Europeans wondered whether their own cities might be next. To anyone who had been following the issue of Europe’s Muslims, the riots were no surprise. The undercurrent of frustration and violence that burst forth had been percolating just below the surface of French society for years. The only surprises involved the episode’s interpretations.

Most commentators correctly noted that although many of the young French rioters were Muslims, Islam did not inspire their violence. Some on the political Right in America sought connections between the youths and Al Qaeda, but none were to be found—at least, none involving cooperation with international terror. But on a deeper level, a connection can be drawn between the French rioters and some of Muslim Europe’s extremists, such as the July 2005 suicide bombers of London’s Underground. Both groups are acting out of a sense of alienation from European society.

Alienation has been fomenting conflicts over symbols. As Germany prepared to host the World Cup in the summer of 2006, Europe’s largest, and fully legal, brothel adorned its façade with the flags of all 32 competing nations alongside the image of a prostitute. Outraged that the flags of Saudi Arabia and Iran appeared in this context, Muslim protestors demanded the woman’s image be removed. This anger mirrored in the miniature the outburst over perceived anti-Muslim Danish cartoons a few months before.

Acts of extremism always grab the headlines, but headlines tell us little about how the perpetrators came to commit extremist acts. This book steps back from the violence surrounding the Paris riots, the London and Madrid bombings, and the assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in 2004. Instead, it spotlights the overwhelmingly moderate, religious majority of Europe’s Muslim millions. The aim is to reveal the deep ambivalence that many European Muslims feel toward Europe and the United States. In order to do this, I let a wide range of men and women speak for themselves. Many of their names, along with subtle details about their lives, have been changed to protect their identities. To the extent possible, I allowed those I interviewed to review the text of our discussions, to ensure that I had not misrepresented them or their views. Most made almost no substantive changes; a few were more aggressive in fine-tuning the presentation. All of my subjects, regardless of their points of view, proved remarkably forthcoming and eager to tell their tales of life in Muslim Europe.

Although this book focuses on the moderate majority, extremists cannot be disregarded. Their violence undeniably has roots in Europe and the United States and has repercussions on Muslims and non-Muslims in both. One especially chilling act, the grisly, premeditated murder of Van Gogh, is worth a closer look, for although it occurred across an ocean, the attack involved the United States. The murderer targeted a specific victim, yet he made certain to express his hatred of America and what it represented to him. By pure coincidence, the assault took place on the same November day that millions of Americans were going to the polls for an election that would return to office President George W. Bush, whose policies have engendered overwhelming resentment across the Muslim world.

Acknowledgments

I began working on this book immediately after leaving the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State in 2002. In January 2004, I assembled a book proposal, hired a New York–based literary agent, and began shopping it around. Back then, it proved remarkably difficult to persuade potential publishers that the subject of Europe’s Muslims was of growing relevance.

After turning to the Johns Hopkins University Press, we found an editor, Henry Tom, eager to consider the work. Henry asked three scholars to anonymously review the proposal. Each immediately grasped what I wanted to accomplish with this book and recommended publication. Although I do not know the identity of these scholars, I am indebted to them, and to Henry Tom, for their belief in this project. Above all, my agent, Will Lippincott, who invested numerous hours editing the proposal, polishing the prose, and relentlessly pursuing a contract, surely deserves a medal. An author could do no better than to find such a stalwart advocate as Will.

Eugene Mazo first suggested I write this book. Both he and Gwen Parker proved instrumental in the final research phase. I am grateful to them both. So many other colleagues and friends assisted me that I can only give a partial list. They include Gerald Feldman and Beverly Crawford at Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies; Harry Kreisler and Stephen Weber, directors of Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies; and Margaret Anderson, the outstanding European historian who graciously read and critiqued parts of the manuscript. This work is much the better thanks to their aid and support. Jack Janes and the entire staff of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies provided me with a base from which I could begin the research, and with their help I obtained generous funding from the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Daimler-Chrysler Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and the Kurt A. Körber Foundation. Analysts in the National Intelligence Council and in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Strategic Assessment Group generously shared their time and research, as did others within the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the Bureau of European Affairs. The Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia encouraged me to disseminate some of my ideas both in its journal, Orbis, and at a conference they sponsored. Later, Berkeley’s Institutes of European and International Studies enabled me to bring the manuscript to completion.

A number of other friends and colleagues provided support along the way. Ben Price not only read many versions of my proposal, he also remained a steadfast believer in this project. As with my previous book, Dominic Hughes turned his logician’s mind to the introduction, scrutinizing the presentation and suggesting a crisper structure. Other friends housed me across Europe, assisted with translations, and discussed various ideas with me. These include Nil Demirçubuk, Samuel Gregg, Rebekah Lee, Stephanie Lo, Nadia Marzouki, Elizabeth Miles, Birthe Miller, Ena Pedersen, Rosa Pedersen, Kristin Rebien, and Zhenya Shaposhnikova. My friend and favorite librarian, Michelle Brocius, has helped me through every stage of the research. Michelle possesses a true gift for ferreting out obscure articles, arcane information, fascinating facts, and all the published works I could imagine, plus some I never knew existed. In the final month of writing, I hired a research assistant to help me tie up any loose ends. I was extremely fortunate to find Raakhi Mohan, whose quick mind and positive energy smoothed our ride across the finish line.

As always, my mentors Stanley Hoffmann, Anthony Nicholls, and Stephen Schuker each provided useful feedback and advice. My family has been the greatest support; my mother’s thoughtful feedback on drafts, not to mention her loving care and chicken soup, boosted my productivity immensely. My family’s encouragement makes everything possible.

Introduction

THE PROLIFIC ASSASSIN

Had it been an ordinary homicide, it would scarcely have been mentioned in the local Amsterdam press, let alone in the global media. But this was no ordinary murder, for the victim was famous, the assailant was Muslim, and the motive appeared to be revenge. Yet despite the intense international coverage, many observers remain unaware that the Dutch-Moroccan murderer had Americans in mind as he planned the gruesome attack.

On the morning of November 2, 2004, while Americans were absorbed in their presidential election, 47-year-old Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, great-grandnephew of the artist Vincent van Gogh, was riding his bicycle to work along an Amsterdam boulevard. Racing up beside him came another bicyclist, a young man dressed in traditional Moroccan garb. Without warning, the stranger suddenly revealed a handgun, aimed, and fired. Swerving off the road, Van Gogh leapt off his bike and ran, but the assailant kept shooting, hitting his target several times. The bullets might have been enough to kill, but the assassin was not finished. He rushed at Van Gogh, wielding a butcher’s knife. Don’t do it, Van Gogh pleaded, but without hesitation the stranger stabbed him repeatedly and slit his throat. The incident occurred so quickly that the perpetrator, 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri, could still have fled the scene with a chance of escape. Instead, he removed a five-page note from his pocket, placed it over Van Gogh’s torso, and plunged a second knife into the bloody corpse, pinning the note to his victim’s body. Police chased Bouyeri through a nearby park, exchanged fire, and captured him only after shooting him in the leg. Several days later, the text of Bouyeri’s elaborate note was made public. In its conclusion the assassin wrote, I have no doubt that you, O America—along with Europe—will surely fall.

The motive behind Van Gogh’s murder seemed clear. Only a few months before, the controversial filmmaker had directed Submission, a movie depicting the treatment of women in Islam. The images he showed could hardly have been more inflammatory. The film, which tells the story of a Muslim woman who is beaten by her husband and raped by her uncle, included four nearly naked women, covered only by transparent robes. Their bodies bore whip marks and had Quranic passages affirming a man’s right to beat his wife painted across them.

Most commentators assumed that Van Gogh was killed in retaliation for his film. But if Bouyeri was simply taking revenge against Van Gogh for the film, as was widely believed, then why did he address the United States in his murder note? No Americans produced the film. No Americans acted in it, and few Americans even saw it.

Breeding Terrorists

No one is born a terrorist; terrorists are bred. Some are shaped by societal exclusion, convinced they are unwelcome in their own homelands. Others are seduced by sermons of hate, the hapless adherents of perverted preachings. Though all are born neutral, they turn to terror in search of something larger than themselves. Theirs is a spiritual quest gone horribly wrong. Such may have been the case for Van Gogh’s assassin. Bouyeri was born and reared in Satellite City, a working-class Muslim ghetto on Amsterdam’s western fringe. A college dropout and one-time journalist, Bouyeri had once written in praise of Holland’s multiculturalism, but unable to find steady work, he turned to petty crime. After 9/11, he proved an easy recruit for the Hofstadt Cell, a group of young men who gathered at the El-Tawheed mosque in his neighborhood, reading the radical writings of Syrian cleric Sheikh Abu Khaled. Before long, Bouyeri had donned the traditional Arab robe (the djallabah), moved out of his family’s apartment, and increasingly saw America and the West as enemies of Islam.

As word of Van Gogh’s assassination spread quickly across Amsterdam, some 10,000 Dutch thronged into a city square in shock and protest. In the days that followed, Holland was racked by anti-Muslim attacks. Muslim schools were bombed, children terrorized, and several mosques were set ablaze. To outside observers, the sudden burst of violent animus in a traditionally peaceful country seemed incongruous. But the Van Gogh affair and its aftermath reflect trends underway long before the Madrid train bombings of March 2004 or even America’s 9/11. The Dutch case symbolized the social tensions mounting across Europe between a burgeoning young, religious Muslim population, on the one hand, and a fearful, secular, ethnic European populace, on the other.

Seven months after the slaying, Bouyeri was sentenced to life in prison. (There is no death penalty in Holland.) At his trial, he showed no remorse for his crime, insisting he would do it again if given the chance. Clutching a Quran, he declared, the law compels me to chop off the head of anyone who insults Allah and the prophet.

Europeans were horrified by the brutal murder of Van Gogh and the anti-Muslim violence that followed it. But Bouyeri, unfortunately, is not an aberration. He and his cell are simply the logical result of a long-term cultivation, a process in which many cultural and economic forces are at play. While the West has slept, even after the wake-up call of 9/11, religious extremists from Muslim states have been actively enlisting Western men like Bouyeri, hoping to breed future Osama bin Ladens. Europe’s failure to integrate its Muslims, combined with America’s battered image in the Muslim world, has left too many Western Muslims easy prey for violent dogmas. This volatile European fault line, where Western failures meet Islamic extremism, is America’s Western front in the war on terror. Until America and Europe adopt new strategies, the West will increasingly become the incubation ground for breeding Bin Ladens.

Muslim Europe: The Case for America’s Failure

Walk along London’s Edgeware Road, where many shops are Arab-owned, and you will find bookstores with radical literature calling for jihad against America. Enter some Marseilles homes, and you can hear preaching against the American way of life. From the Algerian districts outside of Paris to Turkish enclaves around Berlin, one can easily tap into a font of hatred toward America. The Hamburg-based hijackers of 9/11 showed how this hostility threatens American security. The terrorists who blew up Madrid’s commuter trains on March 11, 2004, were not solely targeting Spanish civilians; they aimed to gain Spain’s withdrawal from Iraq, in hopes of leaving U.S. forces isolated. The same motives appear to have inspired the suicide bombers on London’s underground in July 2005. The daily attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq—some traced to European Muslims—are reinforcing the lesson. Europe is becoming fertile ground for Muslim militancy, and America is its prime target.

Richard Clarke, the U.S. government’s former counterterrorism chief, divides the Muslim world into concentric circles. The largest, outermost circle contains all of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, who for the most part are absorbed in their daily lives, repelled by terror and extremism. The innermost circles consist of the hardened fanatics, a relatively small group Clarke estimates at between 50,000 and 100,000. These are the jihadists bent on the West’s destruction, against whom force is the most common response. But it is the second circle, the middle ring, that is of the greatest concern for a hearts-and-minds campaign. Under the right circumstances, some could be persuaded to lend support to extremism, and others might join terrorist cells. On the other hand, with a wise approach, they could just as readily support America. These Muslims, those in the second circle, are the ones whose support the United States and Europe urgently need to attract.¹

America’s appeal in the Muslim world has rarely been lower. An extensive Pew Research Center survey on global attitudes in 2005 found that majorities in Muslim countries hold negative views of the United States, including in those nations the United States calls its friends. A mere 23 percent of Pakistanis and 21 percent of Jordanians have a favorable opinion of America. A similar Zogby poll in late 2005 found predominantly unfavorable views in Lebanon (66 percent), Jordan (63 percent), the United Arab Emirates (73 percent), Morocco (64 percent), Saudi Arabia (89 percent), and Egypt (85 percent).² The Pew organization poll revealed that in Turkey, a NATO member and key U.S. ally, only 17 percent support the U.S.-led war on terror, and in 2004, another Pew survey found that a stunning 31 percent of Turks believed that suicide attacks on Americans in Iraq were justifiable. That same study reported that 55 percent of Jordanians and 65 percent of Pakistanis held favorable views of Bin Laden.³

Unfortunately, America’s battered image extends throughout Europe, where young Muslims are flocking to extreme views.⁴ In one large-scale study of Turkish-German Muslims in their twenties and teens, almost one-third agreed that Islam must become the state religion in every country. Even though they live in Europe, 56 percent declared that they should not adapt too much to Western ways but should instead live according to Islam. Almost 40 percent stated that Zionism, the European Union, and the United States threaten Islam. Perhaps most disturbing, just over one-third insisted that if it serves the Muslim community, then they are ready to use violence against nonbelievers.

America’s unpopularity mixed with rising Islamist fundamentalism would be a volatile combination under even the best of circumstances. But added to this mixture is a dangerous demographic ingredient. Muslim populations are exploding. Conservative estimates project that Muslims will be the majority in major German, French, and Dutch cities within a generation. France is already home to 5 million Muslims, almost 10 percent of its total population. Holland, once a safe haven for refugees, will be deporting 26,000 asylum seekers, many of them Muslim, in an effort to stem the rising tide of its Muslim underclass. At the same time, the birthrates of ethnic Europeans are imploding, exacerbating fears that Muslims will one day become a dominant majority. Without coherent, thoughtful integration strategies, the consequences will be dramatic. For Europe, it could mean continent-wide unrest of the kind that racked France in November 2005, when weeks of car burnings raged across French suburbs. It could mean divisive social fragmentation, or a total reordering of the welfare state. For America, the effects could be as perilous as the fraying of transatlantic ties or the recurrence of terrorist attacks at home.

Throughout the EU, more than 15 million Muslims are living, working, raising families, building homes, and starting businesses in lands where capitalism, democracy, and freedom are the norm. American TV shows, films, and products are readily available. American news media is overwhelmingly accessible. If America cannot attract Muslim hearts and minds along this Western front, it has little chance of appealing to them in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, or beyond.

Ambi-Americanism

Fortunately, the story of Europe’s Muslims and their views of America is far more complex than the raw survey data and violence might suggest. Bouyeri’s act in no way represents the sentiments of most of Europe’s Muslims. Yet neither are Europe’s Muslims enamored of mainstream European or American culture. Theirs is a highly mixed bag of attitudes and beliefs. Torn between two polarizing extremes, Muslim Europe exists in a state of layered ambivalence: ambivalent toward America, toward Europe, and toward mainstream European and American cultural values. Above all, many are uncertain whether and how Islam can coexist within the expanding EU. Will the EU remain a Christian Club, treating Muslim cultures as alien to the continent, or will Muslims find their future as well-integrated, equal members of European society?

Opinion within Muslim Europe is divided. Although their parents and grandparents retain strong attachments to their ancestral homelands in the Muslim world, Europe’s younger Muslims are torn between two new identities. One is European: secular, modern, and middle-class. The other is pan-Islamist: a global community, united under God. Both identities possess powerful appeal, but only one is turning Muslims against America and mainstream European society.

European Muslims are in fact conflicted in their views of America. Because many Muslims are of two minds when it comes to America, it makes little sense to speak of anti-Americanism. To be truly against America is to hate the entire nation: its people, its products, and its policies.